Anyone who dines out with young children will tell you that it’s not always the easiest experience – between trying to keep the kids occupied, and dodging diners’ dirty looks every time your table makes a sound, it can be quite an ordeal.
One would hope, however, that restaurant staff and management would be sympathetic to the plight of a mother and her sick child. For Rebecca Harnett, however, this was not the case.
Ms Harnett has stirred up outrage online, after going public with the story of how she was charged $10 extra by a restaurant – all because her young son vomited on the floor.
The Australian mum-of-three recalled how she was waiting to eat lunch with her three young kids at the Glasshouse Bistro, when her youngest little one, two-year-old Levi, got sick.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Ms Harnett revealed that she asked the restaurant staff for paper towels to clean up – she certainly didn’t expect anyone else to clean up after her son.
The staff then proceeded to give her a plastic bag into which to place the cleaning materials, which she was totally fine with.
It was what happened next that completely took the mother by surprise - she was told that she would be charged $30 in order for the staff to get the floor clean to their standards.
Despite having already cleaned up, Ms Harnett went over the area once again with cleaning products – but, again, that wasn’t enough. When she asked for the bill, she discovered that she was being charged an extra $10 to cover the cost of sterilising the restaurant’s mop!
“I did it all and still got charged to do it…I’ve spoken to my family and they think it’s ridiculous. I don’t think we’ll be going back to that spot,” she told The Chronicle.
Following an angry backlash from diners on Facebook, you would think that staff and management at the Glasshouse Bistro would realise the error of their ways – but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Responding to a request for comment, a spokesperson said: “It was an unfortunate set of circumstances for the customers and their child and the embarrassment that it would have caused them. It was an unfortunate set of circumstances for us too. The incident caused us a loss of income because that section for the restaurant wasn't able to be used for a period of time.”
"We thought at the time that our nominal charge of $10 was fair considering we had to allocate a staff member to clean up the mess to our satisfaction after they left - to make sure the area was properly sterilised…If we were given that set of circumstances again, we probably wouldn't charge $10 but just accept it as our lot,” they added.
Do you think it’s ever right to charge someone over their baby’s mess?
